"Oh, Cora!"
"The poor girl!"
Belle and Bess, with clasped hands, bent over the prostrate form of the girl, whose plain, black dress showed the dust and travel stains of the highways about Chelton. From the verandah Mrs. Kimball stepped in, through the long window.
"Get some water, Cora," she directed in a calm and self-possessed voice. "Also the aromatic ammonia on my dressing table. It is merely a faint. Poor girl! She seemed very weak while she was talking to me. I was just going to ask her to sit down, and let me have a cup of tea brought to her, when she suddenly turned away from me and came in where you girls were."
"She heard us talking," ventured Bess, a little awed by the strange happening.
"And she asked the oddest question--about Sea Horse Island--where papa is going--and she spoke of her father--I wonder what she meant?"
asked Belle.
"Time enough to find out after we"ve revived her," suggested Cora, who, like her mother, was not at all alarmed by a mere fainting fit.
Belle, inspired by her chum"s coolness, had stooped over and was raising the girl"s head.
"Don"t do that!" exclaimed Cora. "The trouble is all the blood has gone from her head now. Let it remain low and the circulation will become normal, after the has had a little stimulant. I"ll get the ammonia," and she hurried off, stopping long enough to ring for her mother"s maid.
The foreign girl opened her dark brown eyes under the reviving stimulus of the aromatic spirits of ammonia, and she tried to speak.
She seemed anxious to apologize for the trouble she had caused by fainting.
"That"s all right, my dear," said Mrs. Kimball, soothingly. "Don"t bother your poor head about it. You may stay here until you feel better."
"But, senora--" she protested, faintly.
"Hush!" begged Cora, touching the girl"s hand gently with her own brown fingers. It was a pretty little hand, that of the lace seller--a hand not at all roughened by heavy work. Indeed, if she had made some of the dainty lace she was exhibiting, a piece of which was even now entangled about her, she needs must keep both hands unroughened.
"Oh, but Senorita, I--I am of ze ashamed to be so--to be--" Again her voice trailed off into that mere faintness, which was as weak as a whisper, yet unlike it.
"Now, not another word!" insisted Mrs. Kimball, in the tone of her daughter, and the Robinson twins well knew she meant to have her own good way. "You are in our hands, my dear child, and until you are able to leave them, you must do as we say. A little more of that ammonia, Cora, and then have Janet bring in some warm bouillon--not too hot. I believe the poor child is just weak from hunger," she whispered over the head of the lace seller, whose brown eyes were now veiled with the olive lids.
"Oh!" gasped Bess. "Hungry!"
"Hush! She"ll hear you," cautioned Belle, for somehow she sensed the proudness of those who, though they toil hard for their daily bread, yet have even greater pride than those who might, if they wished, eat from golden dishes--the pride of the poor who are ashamed to have it known that they hunger--and there is no more pitiful pride.
The girl did not show signs of sensing anything of that which went on around her. Even when the second spoonful of ammonia had trickled through her trembling lips, she did not again open her eyes.
"Here is the bouillon," said Janet, as she came in with some in a dainty cup, on a servette.
"We must try to get her to take a little," said Mrs. Kimball, who had her arm under the girl"s neck. A dusky flush in the olive cheeks told of the returning blood, under the whip of the biting ammonia.
Some few sips of the hot broth the girl was able to take, but she did not show much life, and, after a close look at her immobile countenance, and feeling of the cold and listless hands, Cora"s mother said:
"I think we had better put her to bed, and have Dr. Blake look at her when he comes for Jack."
"Oh, Jack! I had almost forgotten about him!" exclaimed Cora. "We must go to the depot. It is almost time for his train."
"You have time enough to help me," said her mother, gently. "I think we must look after her, Cora, at least--"
"Oh, of course, Mother. We can"t send her to the hospital, especially when she seems so refined. She is really--clean!" and Cora said the word with a true delight in its meaning. She had seen so many itinerant hawkers of lace who were not and neither were their wares.
"Oh, she has such a sweet, sweet face," murmured Belle, who was fair, and who had always longed to be dark.
"Is there a bed ready," Janet asked Mrs. Kimball.
"Yes, Madam, in the blue room." The Kimball family had a habit of distinguishing chambers by the color of the wall papers.
"That will do. We"ll take her there. I think a little rest and food is all she needs. She looks as though she had walked far to-day."
A glance at the worn and dusty shoes confirmed this.
"Can we carry her, or shall I call John?" asked Cora, referring to the one man of all work, who kept the Kimball place in order.
"Oh, I think we can manage," said her mother. "She is not heavy."
It was not until Cora and her mother lifted the girl, that they realized what a frail burden she was in their arms.
"She"s only a girl, yet she has the face of a woman, and with traces of a woman"s troubles," whispered Belle, as Cora and Mrs. Kimball, preceded by Janet to hold aside the draperies, left the room.
"Yes. And I wonder what she meant by speaking of her father and Sea Horse Island in the way she did?" spoke Bess. "It sounds almost like a mystery!"
"Oh, you and your mysteries!" scoffed Belle. "You"d scent one, if an Italian organ grinder stopped in front of the house, looked up at your window, and played the Miserere."
"I might give him something to eat, anyhow," snapped Bess--that is, as nearly as Bess ever came to snapping, for she was so well "padded," both in mariners and by nature, that she was too much like a mental sofa cushion to hurt even the feelings of any one.
Cora came down presently, announcing:
"She is better now. She took a little of the bouillon, but she is very weak. Mother insists on her staying in bed. She really seems a very decent sort of a person--the girl, I mean," added Cora quickly, with a little laugh. "She was so afraid of giving trouble."
"Did she tell anything of herself?" asked Bess.
"She tried to, but mother would not hear of it until she is stronger.
I really think the poor thing was starving. She can"t make much of a living selling lace, though some of it is very beautiful," and Cora picked up from the library door the length that had dropped from the girl"s hand.
"Wasn"t it strange--that she should come in and seem so worked-up over the mention of Sea Horse Island?" spoke Belle.
"It was," admitted Cora. "We shall have to find out about it later--she was on the verge of telling us, when she fainted. But, girls, if I am to go get Jack, it"s time I started. Are you coming?"
"Suppose we go in our car," suggested Bess.
"You may want all the room you have to spare in yours, Cora, to bring back some of his luggage. And perhaps some of the boys besides Walter may come on from Exmouth with Jack. In that case--""
"Exactly!" laughed Cora. "And if they do you want to be in a position to offer them your hospitality. Oh, Bess! And I thought you would be true to Jack; especially when he is so ill!"
"Cora Kimball! I"ll--" but Bess, her face flaming scarlet, found no words to express her, at least pretended, indignation. "Come on, Belle," she cried. "We won"t let a boy or young man ride in our car, not even if they beg us!"
"Oh, I didn"t mean anything!" said Cora, contritely. But Bess simulated indignation.
The throb of motors soon told that the three girls were on their way.